Judith had made so strong a party, that she resolved to attempt the subversion of the Christian religion, and, with it, the succession in the line of Solomon. The children of the royal family were at this time, in virtue of the old law, confined on the almost inaccessible mountain of Damo in Tigrè. The short reign, sudden and unexpected death of the late king Aizor, and the desolation and contagion which an epidemical disease had spread both in court and capital, the weak state of Del Naad who was to succeed Aizor and was an infant; all these circumstances together, impressed Judith with an idea that now was the time to place her family upon the throne, and establish her religion by the extirpation of the race of Solomon. Accordingly she surprised the rock Damo, and slew the whole princes there, to the number, it is said, of about 400.

Some nobles of Amhara, upon the first news of the catastrophe at Damo, conveyed the infant king Del Naad, now the only remaining prince of his race, into the powerful and loyal province of Shoa, and by this means the royal family was preserved to be again restored. Judith took possession of the throne in defiance of the law of the queen of Saba, by this the first interruption of the succession in the line of Solomon, and, contrary to what might have been expected from the violent means she had used to acquire the crown, she not only enjoyed it herself during a long reign of 40 years, but transmitted it also to five of her posterity, all of them barbarous names, originating probably in Lasta: These are said to be,

Totadem,
Jan Shum,
Garima Shum,
Harbai,
Marari.

Authors, as well Abyssinian as European, have differed widely about the duration of these reigns. All that the Abyssinians are agreed upon is, that this whole period was one scene of murder, violence, and oppression.

Judith and her descendents were succeeded by relations of their own, a noble family of Lasta. The history of this revolution, or cause of it, are lost and unknown in the country, and therefore vainly fought after elsewhere. What we know is, that with them the court returned to the Christian religion, and that they were still as different from their predecessors in manners as in religion. Though usurpers, as were the others, their names are preserved with every mark of respect and veneration. They are,

Tecla Haimanout,
Kedus Harbé,
Itibarek,
Lalibala,
Imeranha Christos,
Naacueto Laab.

Not being kings of the line of Solomon, no part of their history is recorded in the annals, unless that of Lalibala, who lived in the end of the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth century, and was a saint. The whole period of the usurpation, comprehending the long reign of Judith, will by this account be a little more than 300 years, in which time eleven princes are said to have sat upon the throne of Solomon, so that, supposing her death to have been in the year 1000, each of these princes, at an average, will have been a little more than twenty-four years, and this is too much. But all this period is involved in darkness. We might guess, but since we are not able to do more, it answers no good purpose to do so much. I have followed the histories and traditions which are thought the most authentic in the country, the subject of which they treat, and where I found them; and though they may differ from other accounts given by European authors, this does not influence me, as I know that none of these authors could have any other authorities than those I have seen, and the difference only must be the fruit of idle imagination, and ill-founded conjectures of their own.

In the reign of Lalibala, near about the 1200, there was a great persecution in Egypt against the Christians, after the Saracen conquest, and especially against the masons, builders, and hewers of stone, who were looked upon by the Arabs as the greatest of abominations; this prince opened an asylum in his dominions to all fugitives of that kind, of whom he collected a prodigious number. Having before him as specimens the ancient works of the Troglodytes, he directed a number of churches to be hewn out of the solid rock in his native country of Lasta, where they remain untouched to this day, and where they will probably continue till the latest posterity. Large columns within are formed out of the solid rock, and every species of ornament preserved, that would have been executed in buildings of separate and detached stones, above ground.

This prince undertook to realize the favourite pretensions of the Abyssinians, to the power of turning the Nile out of its course, so that it should no longer be the cause of the fertility of Egypt, now in possession of the enemies of his religion. We may imagine, if it was in the power of man to accomplish this undertaking, it could have fallen into no better hands than those to whom Lalibala gave the execution of it; people driven from their native country by those Saracens who now were reaping the benefits of the river, in the places of those they had forced to seek habitations far from the benefit and pleasure afforded by its stream.

This prince did not adopt the wild idea of turning the course of the Nile out of its present channel; upon the possibility or impossibility of which, the argument (so warmly and so long agitated) always most improperly turns. His idea was to famish Egypt: and, as the fertility of that country depends not upon the ordinary stream, but the extraordinary increase of it by the tropical rains, he is said to have found, by an exact survey and calculation, that there ran on the summit, or highest part of the country, several rivers which could be intercepted by mines, and their stream directed into the low country southward, instead of joining the Nile, augmenting it and running northward. By this he found he should be able so to disappoint its increase, that it never would rise to a height proper to fit Egypt for cultivation. And thus far he was warranted in his ideas of succeeding (as I have been informed by the people of that country), that he did intersect and carry into the Indian Ocean, two very large rivers, which have ever since flowed that way, and he was carrying a level to the lake Zawaia, where many rivers empty themselves in the beginning of the rains, which would have effectually diverted the course of them all, and could not but in some degree diminish the current below.